Last Sunday morning seemed like any other. I got up, pressed the on button on the coffee maker and awaited my normal rapid and lengthy infusion of coffee bliss as I started up the laptop in the office. I moved to the family room so I could hear if the baby boy woke up and began to open my normal and numerous tabs that are always running when I am in the pilot seat.

As usual I started in Hootsuite, checking follows and mentions, then migrated to counts from overnight. WHAT? I went from 48,176 followers to nearly 75,000 followers. Alarm bells sounded as I stared at it, my mind racing…

Someone has purchased followers for my Twitter account. Clearly this is an attempt to discredit my solid reputation in the industry. Who could have done such a thing, I wondered?